There is much interest in Apple’s new Fusion Drive for Macs, where an SSD and conventional Hard Drive are paired into one drive. Files are automatically moved between the SSD and HD depending on usage, so the most frequently accessed files reside on the faster SSD and the HD provides greater capacity for infrequently used files. The feature sounds like a step forward for users with more files than a reasonably priced SSD can store, but there are still many answers and reliability tests needed before it’s something to recommend for use on a hackintosh.

After recently buying a 128Gb OCZ Vertex Plus SSD from Aria, for the bargain price of £40, I have been looking at ways to use this with my 2Gb hard drive. I recently added a Seagate 2Gb 7200.14 drive, using my previous 2Gb drive as a backup. The new Seagate gave a big boost to read/write performance, going from around 50Mb/s read/write on the old HD to 140Mb/s read/write on the Seagate 7200.14. This testing was done using the free Blackmagic Disk Speed Test app for the Mac appstore, so while in no way comprehensive does show a big speed increase for sequential access.

The OCZ Vertex Plus SSD is an older generation device that gives around 160Mb/s write and 200Mb/s read speeds. This is way below the 500MB/s+ speeds that newer SSD’s can offer, but this was intended as a cheap test before committing to a more expensive SSD. The next decision is how to use the two drives, with three main options available:

1. Install everything on the SSD, then tell individual applications to move their data files to the Hard drive. An example would be moving the iTunes library to the hard drive and pointing iTunes at it.
2. Install everything on the SSD, then move either a single user account or the /Users folder to the hard drive. This method uses symbolic links and/or settings for the user account.
3. Install everything on the SSD, then move selected large folders from the user account to the hard drive. This could include the music, movies and photo’s folders. Use symbolic links to make the OS think these are still on the SSD.

The first option involves lots of configuration in different applications, and the third requires making a symbolic link for each folder that is moved. My choice was the second option, which while not quite as fast as the third option (user Library folder with preference files is on the slower hard drive) is a lot simpler to manage.

The hackintosh already had a 2Tb volume (named HD2TB) containing a full installation with Applications, Library, System and Users folders. I wanted to clone everything except my user account (named macpro) to the SSD. Using the worth-every-penny-even-though-it’s-no-longer-free Carbon Copy Cloner I select everything except /Users/macpro and cloned this to the 128Gb SSD. My 2Tb drive was around half full, with 965Gb in my macpro account and 55Gb in Applications+Library+System. This put 55Gb on the SSD, which included a “Temp” user account to log into when booting from the SSD. Multibeast from TonyMacX86 was then used to install the Chimera bootloader on the SSD.

Next step was to boot from the SSD, and log into the “Temp” account. I opened System Preferences then Users & Groups, and found that although I had not cloned the contents of my user account (at /users/macpro), it was listed in the Other Users list. Holding the Control key while clicking the macpro account showed the advanced options menu. The Home Directory option was changed from /Users/macpro to /Volumes/HD2TB/Users/macpro.

Logging out of the Temp account and into the macpro account displayed my desktop as I expected. All the files were present on the desktop and some apps would work fine. The problem came when launching something like Adobe Lightroom that looked for its library at /Users/macpro/Pictures/Lightroom and could not find it as it had moved to /Volumes/HD2TB/Users/macpro/Pictures/Lightroom. The solution is either manually set the location for all Apps that require it, or use one symbolic link to the user accounts.

Using Terminal I navigated to the root of the SSD, and typed:

sudo rm -rf Users

This deleted the Users folder from the SSD, which was fine as the user accounts I wanted were on the hard drive. Next I created a symbolic link to the Users folder on the hard drive:

ln -s /Volumes/HD2TB/Users

Now whenever anything (app or OS) looks for /Users/macpro it is redirected to /Volumes/HD2TB/Users/macpro. I will have to make two backups now, one of the SSD with the operating system, and one of the HD with user accounts. The backup HD can be partitioned into a 128Gb partition to backup the SSD and the rest to backup HD2TB.

This also gives me the option of cloning the 128Gb OCZ SSD to a faster SSD in future without touching the user accounts on the HD. The Samsung 830 series SSD’s are recommended for Mac’s, so with the 128Gb version available for £80 a clear upgrade path is available if required. Application launching with the OCZ SSD has dropped from several bounces of the app icon in the dock to one bounce, so for now the speed increase for booting and application launching is just fine.

For the past few generations of OSX on generic Intel hardware there has been a choice between using a DSDT matched to your motherboard and BIOS, or a selection of additional files to provide full hardware support. My own machines have used the DSDT approach, where a well edited DSDT file provided the best compatibility and smoothest experience. Many of these DSDT files are available with all the hard work done for you at tonymacx86, whose selection of files cover seven motherboard manufacturers including my favourite Gigabyte.

Earlier this year there was much excitement at Gigabyte’s release of the Z77 motherboards which used a new UEFI rather than the traditional BIOS. The biggest surprise here was that Gigabyte boards with the new UEFI did not need a DSDT file for all hardware to work, simplifying the job of getting a hackintosh running well. My own board, a GA-Z68XP-UD3 had a beta UEFI available, soon followed by release U1g. I followed a couple of great guides at TonyMacX86 for upgrading my motherboard from BIOS to UEFI, then configuring the UEFI settings (this is for 7 series motherboards but worked well for me).

The biggest problem I had with the upgrade was making a DOS bootable USB flash drive, as the instructions in the article would not work on my system. I eventually used a Windows 7 PC to make the flash drive, followed by the other steps of the upgrade which proceeded smoothly. Before shutting down for the upgrade the DSDT file was moved from /Extra to the desktop, and after the upgrade the system booted to the desktop with no issues. Everything has worked fine for the two months since the upgrade, including sleep which has proved to be a recurring issue with previous OS upgrades.

The UEFI interface is much better looking than the old BIOS screen (a sample of an old BIOS is shown below), but I have found it to be a bit slower in use. Quickest navigation is by mouse, but my system is not always responsive to mouse clicks. This isn’t a major issue as I spend very little time in the UEFI, and the other benefits are huge. Big thanks to Gigabyte for upgrading a previous generation motherboard for free and to everyone at TonyMacX86 for the great articles and support.

The first Mac OS X 10.8 update is now available through the app store, weighing in at a surprisingly trim 24.2 Mb. It’s just installed on my Macbook Air while my main Hackintosh starts the ritual backup before a system update. No mention of the widely reported battery life issue 10.8 brought to some Mac laptop users.

No problems with the update on Apple hardware so far, the only warning I received was of incompatible software. This turned out to be the Avira antivirus I have been trying, but it’s still present and working correctly. Here are the official Apple release notes for issues addressed by the 10.8.1 update.

About OS X Mountain Lion Update v10.8.1

This update includes general operating system fixes that improve the stability and compatibility of your Mac, including fixes that:

• Resolve an issue that may cause Migration Assistant to unexpectedly quit
• Improve compatibility when connecting to a Microsoft Exchange server in Mail
• Address an issue playing audio through a Thunderbolt display
• Resolve an issue that could prevent iMessages from being sent
• Address an issue that could cause the system to become unresponsive when using Pinyin input
• Resolve an issue when connecting to SMB servers with long names
• Address a issue that may prevent Safari from launching when using a Proxy Automatic Configuration (PAC) file
• Improve 802.1X authentication with Active Directory credentials.

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT5418.

For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

There are plenty of excellent reviews of Mac OS 10.8 Mountain Lion, so this post will focus on the steps taken to upgrade my fully working 10.7.4 system to 10.8. This is not intended as a complete install-from-nothing guide, requiring a working 10.7.x system to start with.

First some details on the hardware used. My Gigabyte P35-DS3R/Q6600 system was re-purposed at the start of 2012, and replaced with the following:

• Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3 Motherboard
• Intel Core i5 2500k cpu
• 16Gb DDR3 Ram
• Nvidia 9800GT 1Gb video card from previous system
• 2Tb and 1.5Tb hard drives from previous system
•  DVD-RW  and BD-Rom from previous system

This was setup with Mac OS 10.7 Lion as a fresh install. The point upgrades mostly went without problem until 10.7.4. This caused a lot of issues with sleep and power management, requiring finding the right settings in the BIOS to get everything working reliably. To summarise, this was the state of the 10.7.4 system before the upgrade to Mountain Lion:

• Sleep, shutdown and restart working as intended.
• Speedstep working, giving multipliers of  16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 34, 35, 36, 37. Results taken using MSRdumper. There were no results between 21 and 34, so there might still be an issue but the system was smooth and responsive.
• Mac App Store fully working
• Audio working, with analogue and digital out
• SATA hot swap working, so drives could be added or removed from the Icy Dock four drive bay without restarting

Since 10.8 was widely reported as due for release on 25th July 2012 the first step that morning was to start making a full bootable backup using SuperDuper. Another option for bootable backups is Carbon Copy Cloner which recently changed from donationware to a commercial license. Carbon Copy Cloner will be $40 going forward, but is currently available for $30. SuperDuper is still $27.95.

Two copies of the 10.7.4 installation were made this time. The intention is to keep one at 10.7.4 for a while to fall back to if needed, and use the other as a backup for the main 10.8 install while changes are made to it. Both backup drives were tested after the backup finished to make sure they were working correctly.

Once 10.8 was released to the Mac App Store the rush of buyers meant a short delay until the purchase could be made and the download started. That took around 30 minutes, and once done a new ‘Install OS X Mountain Lion’ icon appeared next to the previous 10.7 installer in the Applications folder.

Next stop was tonymacx86.com, where a new version of the UniBeast software had been released. Version 1.5.0 is now available as two separate downloads for 10.7 Lion or 10.8 Mountain Lion. At this point I had no idea if upgrading to 10.8 would work (hence the backups), but it would save a huge amount of work over a fresh install so was the first thing to try.

UniBeast takes the 10.8 installer previously downloaded and makes a bootable USB drive installer, and the process took around 15 minutes with my 16Gb Freecom databar. Once completed I shut down the system and removed all other hard drives except the one I wanted to upgrade. A simple mistake in the Installer could have disastrous consequences if the wrong drive was selected.

Booting from the USB installer, the computer stalled at the white screen with grey Apple logo. Rebooting and using the -v switch at the chameleon screen showed booting hanging with an ATAPI error message. Unplugging the two SATA optical drives from the motherboard got past that error, and booting the installer could then complete. There were no options for what to install and just one drive to install onto so starting the upgrade required no more than clicking a couple of buttons. The upgrade took around 30 minutes to complete, but after rebooting (again with -v) another message ‘waiting for root device’ slowly repeated.

A read of the 10.8 installation section at TonyMacX86 showed other early adopters with the same problem, and a suggestion to fix by removing the  ‘UseKernelCache’ line from the org.chameleon.Boot.plist file in /Extra. That worked fine after I booted again with the -x flag added, to start in safe mode. This gave no graphic acceleration which was worrying, but after making the change and restarting my 9800GT worked perfectly.

One thing I have seen frequently suggested to fix problems booting the UniBeast installer is removing some memory cards leaving just one in place. I left all four in during the install and experienced no problems using 16Gb.

Once booting into 10.8 MultiBeast 4.6.1 was used to install the Chimera bootloader. Kext’s for audio were also installed, but after another reboot audio was not working. This was eventually traced to an 899 enabler kext from the 10.7 install, so this was removed and full audio functionality was restored.

Sleep, reboot and shutdown were tested and all worked fine. MSRdumper confirmed that speedstep worked as well as it had under 10.7, the App store still works and SATA drives can be connected or removed without restarting. So far the 10.8 install appears to be working at least as well as its 10.7 predecessor, so I have decided to continue using it as my main install and see what happens.

Software wise there was very little disabled by the upgrade. Virtualbox and VMware were both disabled post install, so I uninstalled Virtualbox (only due to lack of use, it’s still great software) and upgraded VMware to the latest version 4.1.3 which seems to be working just fine. My Macbook Air has also been upgraded to 10.8 and gave no problems. The only thing disabled that time was the Avast antivirus, but that was removed due to an ongoing problem with SSL email accounts. The replacement Avira is already compatible with Mountain Lion so caused no problems.

Minecraft required Java to be downloaded and installed again on 10.8, as we are still relying on Apple providing bug fixes until Oracle takes over. Any other issues will be added here as they are found.

28th July 2012 – Not sure what changed, but the problem I had experienced under 10.7.4 of sleep only working once returned. As part of my initial testing after the 10.8 upgrade I put the computer to sleep and woke it twice, testing for the previous issue. This appeared to work fine just after the upgrade, but yesterday started waking to a black screen and unresponsive system as before.  A search of TonyMacX86 yielded a fix here, which involves a terminal command to modify AppleRTC.kext, fixing a CMOS reset bug.

4th August 2012 – I suffered two kernel panic’s when waking the hackintosh from sleep on 30th and 31st of July, then waking from sleep has worked perfectly since. Both kernel panic’s occurred when I clicked on the Magic Mouse. There is also a problem with my bluetooth Magic Mouse and Trackpad disconnecting after wake. This started with the Trackpad a few times, then the Trackpad worked fine and the Mouse started disconnecting. An article at Macworld details a bluetooth issue causing kernel panic’s, so I currently think this is a Mountain Lion bug not a hackintosh specific issue.

13th August 2012 – To add more detail to the previous bluetooth issue, the problem seems to be the Magic Mouse either going to sleep or losing the connection while the hackintosh is in sleep. If the Magic Mouse is moved or clicked before using the power button to wake the hackintosh it will wake fine. Not touching the mouse before using the power button will cause a kernel panic. The Magic Trackpad does not have this issue.

Another problem is disappearing Finder sidebar icons, as shown here. It doesn’t happen immediately, and sometimes the hackintosh has been used for a few days without a restart before they disappear. Killing and relaunching the Finder does not bring the icons back, a restart does. I’m also not using any hacks to restore colour icons or in any way modify the Finder. The cause of this is currently unclear, so I am hoping this will be fixed in 10.8.1.

The launch of The New iPad is following a similar pattern to some previous Apple device launches. The initial reviews are a mix of “it’s amazing“, “it’s a great device with frustrating Apple limitations” and “it’s rubbish, no-one will buy this but Apple fanboys“. Shortly followed by a much hyped hardware scandal, in this case the device becoming a bit warm under intensive use. While the 2% of Apple and Android advocates rage, the other 98% of the world (the people Apple targets) continue to buy the iPad in ever-increasing numbers.

Having lived with The New iPad  for two weeks (iPad G3 for the rest of this article), here are some thoughts. As the owner of a first generation iPad I skipped the iPad 2, so all of my comparisons are between the two iPad’s I have owned and used daily.

Screen

My initial thoughts on the screen were amazing resolution, colours too warm. In direct comparison to the iPad G1, the G3 screen is much warmer, or yellow tinged, than the G1 and G2 iPad’s. Having now lived with the G3 screen for two weeks, I rarely notice the warm colour any more. How noticeable the warmth of the screen is seems to be related to the ambient light. In Daylight it’s fine, under Tungsten lights it looks a little bit warm or yellow.

The initial impression of the doubled resolution (2048 x 1536) screen doesn’t go away. It’s stunning, making photo’s look incredibly sharp, and 1080p video very crisp. The biggest problem for early adopters is that many iPad apps are not yet updated. The new screen makes anything running at 1024 x 768 look blocky, to the point where I switched to new pdf and rss readers until my favourites were updated.

The iPad G1 (left) and iPad G3 (right) – Comparison of home screen safari icons

One app that worked at the higher resolution from the day the iPad G3 was released is Comic Zeal, my comic reader of choice. The interface is still mostly pre-retina resolution, but the comic images are super sharp. It’s no longer necessary to zoom into the page to read the small print, the new limitation on what you can read is your eyesight instead of the iPad screen.

Sample from Comic Zeal on the iPad G1

Sample from Comic Zeal on the iPad G3

If there’s a down side to the new screen resolution it’s that other aspects of the iPad have not kept pace. More on that in the Storage section.

The increased colour saturation of the new screen is also impressive, but doesn’t cross the line into unrealistic colour. Photo’s look vibrant, but also natural. I looked at some mobile phones with OLED screens a few months ago, and hated the over saturated neon colours that many reviewers have praised.

Speed

The iPad G3 is fast. It may not be faster than the G2 model, but it’s massively faster than the G1. Web pages in Safari often appear in one instantaneous reveal after a couple of seconds, rather than piece by piece over a few seconds. Moving between apps using the four finger swipe gesture is smooth. Any form of slowdown or lag is very rare, making the iPad G3 a much more rewarding and smooth device to use.

Going back to Comic Zeal, when new comics are added through iTunes there is a delay on the next launch of the app while the comics are imported. This is much shorter with the iPad G3, so much so that I no longer leave the iPad for a while and go do something else.

Memory

As the great IT guru Moss said, memory is ram. The iPad G3 is widely reported as having one Gigabyte of ram, compared to 512 megabytes on the iPad G2 and 256Mb on the G1. When first released the iPad G1 ran iOS 3 and could run one app at a time. Performance was good as the limited memory was only asked to handle the OS and one app. iOS 4 brought Apple’s limited multitasking, which I always found the iPad G1 struggled with. Switching from the Safari browser to another app and back again would result in the open web pages reloading. The best way of minimising this reloading or app restarting was to keep only a few apps in memory.

The Gigabyte of ram offered by the iPad G3 mostly eliminates this problem, and allows fast switching between open apps. Safari will keep several tabs open for instant access upon returning to the app. While the iPad has always been touted as an “instant on” device, the increase in responsiveness means this is now far more accurate than in previous generations.

Storage

This is the one aspect of the iPad G3 that disappoints. Moving from a 32Gb iPad G1, my thinking was that a resolution doubled device would need as much storage as possible to handle HD video and higher resolution photo’s. Opting for the 64Gb model proved to be sensible, but I can’t understand why Apple didn’t offer a 128Gb model. Even if Apple kept the 16Gb version, a 128Gb model would have offered ample space for HD video for those who wanted to pay a bit more. iCloud storage isn’t an option, as until fast wireless access to the cloud is available everywhere we are stuck with local storage. I expect the market for iPad extra storage devices to grow.

To put this into perspective, on my iPad G1 I had seven holiday video’s exported from iMovie at the Large size, 960 pixels wide. These required 7.4Gb of space on the iPad. One of the video’s was 690Mb in size and around 30 minutes long. For the iPad G3 I exported the same video’s at 1080p, which needed 35Gb of my 57Gb available iPad storage space. The 680Mb video from the iPad G1 grew to a 3.8Gb 1080p file on the iPad G3.

Dropping the resolution to 720p reduced the required space to 19.6Gb, with the one mentioned file dropping to 1.8Gb in size. While not quite as sharp as the 1080p versions, the 720p video’s are very close in quality and a huge improvement over the Large versions.

As with every previous iPad, iPhone and iPod, there is no option to add extra storage using memory cards. Apple sell the camera connection kit for importing photo’s, but unless your iPad is jailbroken I know of no way to play video from an SD card.

Cameras

While the front facing camera remains the same as the iPad G2, the rear facing camera on the iPad G3 gets a big upgrade to a 5 megapixel version of the iPhone 4S camera. Quality of the rear facing camera is good, but as a stills or video camera its value is limited by the size of the iPad. A great camera on a mobile phone makes perfect sense, but who will carry around an iPad for shooting photo’s and video?

The one area I see the rear facing camera showing its value is with augmented reality apps, overlaying information and content over the camera view. The iPad G3 has a good enough camera and plenty of processor power to make this a smooth experience. City or museum guides could be amazing with this.

The lack if quality improvement with the front camera is a little disappointing, but this may be to limit data rates rather than a belief that the current camera is good enough.

4G networking

This is one area I can’t comment on, as I have only used the Wifi iPad G3, and the UK does not have fourth generation mobile data services.

Size, Weight and handling

Coming from the first iPad, the G3 is slimmer and lighter, so I can’t comment on the increase in thickness and weight over the G2. One aspect that doesn’t impress is how slippery the iPad G3 feels, as while the aluminium finish may be attractive it does not provide a secure grip of the device. I picked up a cheap gel case on eBay that covers the back, sides and front edges of the iPad, giving massively improved grip and resistance to knocks without adding much size or weight. It also fits easily inside the Belkin zip case I use when the iPad goes into a bag, and with both cases together costing around twelve pounds I have great protection at a bargain price.

Apps and the Ecosystem

There’s little to say about the apps available for the iPad G3, other than there are a huge number available, and upgrades for the retina screen are coming slower than I would like. Of the 116 added apps on my iPad, 27 were upgraded for the new screen two weeks after release.

Apple doesn’t say much about the hardware inside the iPad. There’s still a dual core processor and new quad core graphics, but beyond that the numbers are not mentioned. Unlike Android tablets listing hardware specifications as a way of differentiating themselves from the competition, Apple has always been more interested in telling us what we can do with the iPad.

Having used computers for over 30 years, I like the Apple approach. I can edit my video in iMovie, export to iTunes and copy to iPad fairly easily. Getting PDF files or comics onto the iPad through iTunes is a bit or a chore sometimes, but the files are then in the right place on the iPad. Some prefer the openness Android, with access to the file system and memory cards, but this introduces the task of managing the file system yourself. Neither system is currently perfect, but my feeling is that the majority of normal tablet users of average technical ability would be more comfortable with Apple’s system. That’s just my opinion, the true test is sales figures and market share.

iOS

Launched with iOS 5.1, Apple are sure to add some new features to this summer’s iOS 6 that will show what the latest iPad can do. One of the best things about Apple’s “walled garden” approach is that owners of older devices still get iOS updates. Even my two and a half year old iPhone 3GS is running the latest version of iOS, albeit with some features missing. I find it strange that some new Android phones and tablets are still launching with Android 2.3.5, with no sign of an update to Android 4 which was launched last year. Again that’s just my opinion, and the average phone user just wants something that works so is likely not concerned with software updates.

Summary

Greeted by some as a disappointing incremental update, the iPad G3 will continue to sell in huge quantities. While the retina screen, faster mobile data and extra ram are great improvements, it’s the ecosystem that makes the iPad the best tablet for the average user and drives sales.

Owners if the iPad G2 will likely find the G3 iPad an unnecessary upgrade, unless they do a lot of reading. For iPad G1 owners or those new to tablets it’s a great buy.

My new iPad arrived at around 11am, so here are my first thoughts and some unboxing photo’s. More to follow as I compare it to my 1st Generation iPad, with some screengrabs from both to get an idea of the improvement in screen resolution.

The new screen is the first thing that impresses, and the difference between icons for Apple’s updated apps and those still at lower resolution.

Here’s the full dock, click for the full resolution view.

Some setup screens, again click for full resolution.

Some screen grabs, comparing the first iPad with 1024 x 768 screen to the new iPad with 2048 x 1536 screen. All screen grabs are from the devices, not re-sized.

iPad 1st generation

iPad 3rd Generation with retina screen

iPad 1st Generation

iPad 3rd Generation with retina screen

The only difference I’m not so happy with so far is the colour difference between the screens of the old and new iPads. I have read of a difference in colour temperature but mine has a slight green tint that is most visible in direct comparison with the first iPad. It’s no that noticeable in isolation, so I will give it time and see if it disappears or needs to go back to Apple. Other than the colour difference the new screen is stunning.

One other thing worth mentioning is that the USB cable supplied with  the new iPad is slightly different to the one I use with my old iPad. The metal tabs that hold the connector into the iPad have a shallower angle on the new cable, which works fine with old and new devices. My old cable is difficult to get into the new iPad, so care is advised.

USB cables, old iPad 1 on left and new iPad 3 cable on right

The one thing I can’t grasp is how some news sources have claimed the new iPad (iPad G3) offers little more than “incremental improvements”. Sure, the iPad G1 had a good screen, and the iPad G3 has a better screen, but that’s like saying 1080p HD is just a little jump over standard definition. The iPad G3 camera can be described as just an improvement over the iPad G2 version. That doesn’t acknowledge that the iPad G2 camera was poor and the iPad G3 camera is a 5 megapixel version of the iPhone 4S camera, one of the best phone camera’s currently available.

I don’t use the Android operating system, but I am happy that it exists and continues to be very popular. Likewise, I’m happy that Microsoft has a Windows 8/Metro strategy that looks credible. Aggressive competition is good for the consumer, and drives innovation. Unfortunately some people just can’t seem to spot a killer product that has in previous models twice proved to be a massive success.

I recently detailed my problems with Backzup and LiveDrive, and have since found Carbonite’s throttling of backup speeds has made the service unusable. I had to contact Carbonite after upgrading my server from a 10.6 Atom to 10.7 i3 setup, as the backup set was frozen and a new one started. I had around 200Gb of data in the backup, and since Carbonite throttle backup speeds to make the service unusable at around 300Gb I could only get half way through the second backup. Contacting Carbonite about the problem resulted in having to delete all the backups and start again, but the speed stayed low and after six weeks I had backed up 60Gb.

I have had no reply from Backzup in the ten weeks since my account was suspended, and LiveDrive said it wasn’t their problem. Also, Firefox warns that https://backzup.com is untrusted as it uses a self-signed certificate, making me wonder how much thought the clowns behind Backzup gave their service. Time to switch to a new online backup company.

After searching for a couple of weeks the service I decided to try was CrashPlan. I was determined not to waste money again, so signed up for a 30 day trial to test the service thoroughly before committing. The software CrashPlan provide is comprehensive, and offers paid online backups or free backups to your own or friends/family’s computers. A 206Gb backup set was started at 4pm on 16th February 2012 and completed at 6am on 1st March. That work out to around 632 megabytes an hour on average, or a little over 15 gigabytes a day. I have a 5 megabit upload speed through Virgin media, offering a maximum theoretical upload rate of 2.25 gigabytes an hour or 54 gigabytes a day. I had been through all the CrashPlan software settings to ensure there were no limits on the upload speed, so the limit appears to be how quickly CrashPlan would accept my data.

To put this into perspective, Carbonite backed up on average 1.42 Gigabytes a day, running some days for 24 hours and others for 6 hours. Even if Carbonite ran 6 hours every day that would be no more than 6 Gigabytes a day. The Backzup/Livedrive account backed up 206Gb in five days, so while it made much better use of my bandwidth the account was suspended/deleted after two weeks so speed is irrelevant.

How fast you can back up data is just a small part of any backup service, and the most important factor is getting every byte of data back when your data is lost. That’s why you use online backup, so it should work perfectly. Livedrive appear to have some problems with this basic task, so how did CrashPlan fare?

To test the integrity of my backup, I downloaded all 24,932 files to a different location and compared to the original files. The restore of 206.6 Gigabytes took around 64 hours, averaging 3.2 Gigabytes an hour. My 50 Megabit download can handle 6.25 Megabytes a second, and I often see this with some of the services I use. That’s a maximum of 22.5 Gigabytes an hour, so while the CrashPlan backup averaged 14% of my download speed, I was using the net connection for other things so I expect around 10 hours could have been knocked off the restore time.

I used an OSX build of Kdiff3 to do the comparison of the original and restored files, and apart from a couple of minor permissions differences every file matched. I browsed through my 24,000 digital camera photo’s, and didn’t find any corruption. All the videos played perfectly, and the other file types opened and worked correctly.

This sort of test took me around three weeks total, but was comfortably within the 30 day CrashPlan trial. I am now confident that CrashPlan have a 100% accurate backup of  my files, so have no reservations about recommending the service and paying for an ongoing account.

On 14th December 2011 I signed up for a free 512Gb online backup account at Backzup. I was initially doubtful that the service could provide that amount of free backup, but it worked well. Backzup is (was?) a Livedrive re-seller, so the software you download is from Livedrive, and you use the Livedrive web site to manage or access your backup.

My reason for trying Backzup was a problem with my Carbonite account. I have used Carbonite for my online backup needs for over two years, and while the service has previously worked well I have now hit the point where Carbonite are throttling my backup so much it’s impossible to use. When I recently upgraded my server hackintosh I moved all the files from the old server to the new one using the Mac Migration Assistant. When I re-installed the Carbonite software on the new server and transfered the backup account the old backup set was retained, and a new one started. The backup set contains 189Gb, so the old 189Gb remained on the Carbonite servers and a new 189Gb backup was started. Carbonite slow down your backup once it gets too big, so mine is wallowing at around 300Gb with over 70Gb remaining. The upload speed is now limited to around 100kbit/second, so I am now waiting for 30 days since the old backup was last seen. At that time the old backup should be deleted, and I can finish the new backup in a reasonable time.

Backzup sounded like an ideal solution, offering 512Gb for free with no upload speed limits. I completed the initial backup of 204Gb in five days, which included suspending the backup a few times to do other things. The service then worked without issue until the 1st January 2012, when the Livedrive software reported it could not log into the account. My attempts to access the Livedrive web site returned a message that the account was suspended, but there is no way to contact Livedrive as I need to log into the account to access their support system. This happened at the point when I was considering upgrading to one of Backzup’s paid accounts, not for the extra space but to pay something for a good service.

I emailed Backzup on 1st January, then waited a few days. Backzup claim they will respond within 24 hours, but it was New Year’s day followed by a bank holiday so I allowed a few days. I received no response to the request for help, so emailed Backzup again on January 5th. I have still not had a reply, so it looks like Backzup are (despite their site providing no information) no longer a viable online backup provider. My searches since the account was disabled have also turned up some worrying tales concerning Livedrive.

I haven’t lost a lot of money directly in this, other than the cost of running the server continuously for five day. It is irritating to get no response from Backzup, after this was posted on their blog on 20th December 2011:

Commenting on the few initial reports about the company, Hernandez said, “Immediately after our launch, we were given some bad reviews by a few blogs, which were totally based on skepticism about our free 512 GB plan. This is cruel and can be threatening to the reputation of a company that is just launching. Despite these hardships, Backzup was able to win the love and trust of over 20,000 people due to its excellent service and world class customer support.

It’s starting to look like the “cruel skepticism” may be justified. As one of those 20,000 people I’m not feeling much love or trust for Backzup at the moment. I would much prefer to be writing a report on how great the Backzup service is, but unless they respond to my requests for help I can’t recommend Backzup.

Until that happens there are a couple of options to get access to a Lion server from a WDTV box. The first is to use MacPorts to install Samba V3 and configure manually, the other is to use NFS. If you want to take the Samba route there are a few good guides at protagonist.co.uk, forums.sonos.com and forum.xbmc.org. I chose to use NFS, and followed the guide at wiki.wdlxtv.com.It took some trial and error to get it all working, so I have provided my configuration here if it’s any help. NFS is not as simple to setup as AFP or SMB networking as I haven’t seen a way to browse shares, instead they are configured on the client and server. I’m using the WDLXTV custom firmware for the Live from wiki.wdlxtv.com which I highly recommend, I’m not sure if a WDTV running standard firmware will work the same way.

My exports file on the server contains:

/Volumes/Media/Movies -ro -mapall=nobody -network 192.168.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
/Volumes/Media/TV -ro -mapall=nobody -network 192.168.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
/Volumes/Media/Photos -ro -mapall=nobody -network 192.168.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
/Volumes/Media/Exercise -ro -mapall=nobody -network 192.168.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
/Shares/Video/Holidays -ro -mapall=nobody -network 192.168.0 -mask 255.255.255.0
/Shares/Video/Travel -ro -mapall=nobody -network 192.168.0 -mask 255.255.255.0

To break this down, the first part is the path to the share. /Shares/Video/Holidays is on the boot drive, /Volumes/Media/Movies is on a second drive named Media.
-ro means mount as read only, these shares are only intended for playing media. I use AFP to add content to the shares.
-mapall=nobody means (I think) do not map remote users to a local user. I’m a bit vague on this part, but it works fine.
-network 192.168.0 -mask 255.255.255.0 makes the share available to all clients on the local network 192.168.0.n. This should be changed to your network addressing.

Once the exports file is placed in /etc I used sudo nfsd restart to restart the NFS server using the new configuration, then showmount -e gives

Exports list on localhost:
/Shares/Video/Travel                192.168.0.0
/Shares/Video/Holidays              192.168.0.0
/Volumes/Media/TV                   192.168.0.0
/Volumes/Media/Photos               192.168.0.0
/Volumes/Media/Movies               192.168.0.0
/Volumes/Media/Exercise             192.168.0.0

That completed the configuration on the server, next was configuring the WDTV Live media streamer to mount the NFS shares on startup. I plugged an old USB flash drive containing my net.mounts file into the WDTV box and restarted. Here’s my net.mounts file, there are six lines but they have been split here due to limited page width:

xmount 192.168.0.10:/Shares/Video/Travel Travel nfs “ro,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,sync,soft”
xmount 192.168.0.10:/Shares/Video/Holidays Holidays nfs “ro,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,sync,soft”
xmount 192.168.0.10:/Volumes/Media/TV TV nfs “ro,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,sync,soft”
xmount 192.168.0.10:/Volumes/Media/Photos Photos nfs “ro,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,sync,soft”
xmount 192.168.0.10:/Volumes/Media/Movies Movies nfs “ro,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,sync,soft”
xmount 192.168.0.10:/Volumes/Media/Exercise Exercise nfs “ro,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,sync,soft”

xmount is the command to mount the share on the WDTV, so it can be accessed like a connected USB drive.
192.168.0.10:/Shares/Video/Travel is my server’s IP address and path to the share. The second Travel is the name of the share on the WDTV
nfs specifies the type of share
“ro,rsize=32768,wsize=32768,proto=tcp,sync,soft” was used as I have a gigabit network and suffered very choppy playback.

Using this configuration I can now access the media on the Lion server from the WDTV box just the same as if it were on a connected USB drive.